Steps to adjust your progressive glasses

05/11/2009

Step1
Accepting your new progressive lenses are not likely to work the moment of putting them on. The most important step to adjust to progressive lenses is to understand that you are asking your eyes to completely change the way they have been working. As time passing by, the need for progressive lenses has gradually presented itself because your eyes began overworking. When you put those progressive glasses on, your eyes can’t just turn that off immediately. So first thing you have to do is get in the right mindset when you pick your new glasses up from the eye doctor.

Step2
Prepare to test each area of the lens. The progressive bifocal lens has a small area for reading at the bottom of the lens, a slightly wider corridor for mid-range going up the center of the lens, and it opens up to a large area of prescription for your distance vision in the top of the lens. You have already understood that making the transition from one range of vision to another is probably not comfortable at this moment, but what you can test is the clarity of vision through each of those areas of the lens. Put your progressive lens eyeglasses on.

Step3
Hold your reading material up close at your usual reading distance. Your eyes should drop naturally to the bottom of the lens to view through the reading area of the glasses. Although technology is improving every day, the size of that reading space does not cover the whole bottom portion of the lens so you may have to move your head slightly to find the area of greatest clarity. If you find a good clear area for reading, you can assume that the portion of your myopia is correct and move on to test the intermediate area of the lenses.

Step4
Hold your reading material at arm’s length and repeat the vision test from Step 3. You are just looking for good visual acuity at this point. Once you find you can see well at that range, move on to the distance.

Step5
Look straight ahead at the distance. Look down the street. Look at people around you. Look at the clock. If you find good clear vision at this distance, too, you know that your prescription is correct and that you know where to find the ranges of vision. Now it is time to work on functioning with the glasses.

Step6
Walk around, carefully, while wearing the glasses. Keep your eyes straight ahead. Vision should be clear. Then move your eyes slowly to the outside edges of the glasses and notice that the vision becomes less clear. Do the same while looking out and slowly drop your eyes lower in the lenses. The lower you get, the worse the vision becomes. This is because your eyes are looking through the prescription for mid- and close range. The key is to train your eyes to automatically find that “sweet spot” in the lenses that corresponds with the distance at which you are looking. It feels awkward at first but it will become second nature.